Posted on 09/13/2007 2:36:33 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
THE VILLAGES, Fla. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson said Thursday he doesn't know enough about efforts by President Bush and Congress to keep Terri Schiavo alive to have an opinion on the right-to-die case that stirred national debate.
Thompson was asked in an interview for Bay News 9's "Political Connections" program if he thought Congress' intervention to save the life of the brain-dead woman two years ago was appropriate.
"I can't pass judgment on it. I know that good people were doing what they thought was best," Thompson said. "That's going back in history. I don't remember the details of it."
Congress passed a bill after Schiavo's feeding tube was removed in March 2005 to allow a federal court to review the case, and Bush returned from his Texas ranch to sign the bill into law. But a federal judge refused to order the tube reinserted, a decision upheld by a federal appeals court and the Supreme Court.
Thompson, a former Tennessee senator who left office in 2003, did say, "Local matters generally speaking should be left to the locals. I think Congress has got an awful lot to keep up with."
Earlier, Thompson told a crowd in Jacksonville that Bush's signature education program isn't working and that he would provide federal education money with fewer strings attached.
"We've been spending increasing amounts of federal money for decades, with increasing rules, increasing mandates, increasing regulations," Thompson said. "It's not working."
He added that there are problems with Bush's No Child Left Behind program, which requires annual testing and punishes schools that don't make progress.
"No Child Left Behind — good concept, I'm all for testing — but it seems like now some of these states are teaching to the test and kind of making it so that everybody does well on the test — you can't really tell that everybody's doing that well. And it's not objective," Thompson said.
Instead, he said the federal government should be providing block grants as long as states set up objective testing programs.
He said his message to states would be, "We expect you to get objective testing done and publicize those tests for the local parents and for the local citizens and suffer the political ramifications locally if things don't work out right."
The former star of NBC's "Law & Order" was responding to a question as he began a three-day bus tour of Florida, his first visit to the state since announced his candidacy last week. A woman asked what he would do for education. He told her decisions on how schools are run should be made by local and state decisions, not dictated out of Washington.
Thompson voted for the No Child Left Behind law in 2001, as did most of his fellow senators.
"It's your responsibility," he said. "If you don't like what's going on, don't get in your car and drive by your school board and maybe drive by the capitol and get on an airplane and fly to Washington and say, 'I don't like the way the school down the street is being run.'" Hosted by Google
You know as well as I there are people on this forum who are going to vote based on one issue, be it Schiavo, abortion, WOT, taxes, immigration, etc.
I would say that the issue of life and death, and government's control over deciding this issue, is just about the most important moral issue a president would need to have an opinion on.
Good enough. Cherry picked quotes pulled out of context never tell the entire story. I look forward to seeing more of Thompson. Boycotting debates is a fine strategy to steal the spotlight but now it’s hackneyed. I want a debate and I want something more than a character and generalized principles that are non-specific in practice. But hey, I want the same thing from all the candidates too so it’s nothing against folksy Fred and his spotlight grabbing ways. If he can build support across many demographics I’ll climb on board. Otherwise I’ll have to do what I have to do to slow down the party of defeat and despair. And yeah, it’s always a dirty job.
Yes.
There was a very long and controversial legal battle between her husband and her family regarding her medical state, which a lot of "experts" considered vegetative.
The husband wanted her dead, and the family wanted to take custody of her and keep her alive as long as possible.
This is kind of strange because there is plenty of video of her awake and aware, as opposed to laying there in some comatose state, so the whole "vegetative state" argument was weak, at best.
In any case, the final judgement of the court was to have her feeding tube removed, and she basically starved to death.
In defense of the court's decision, many "medical experts" insisted that starving to death was actually a "euphoric" experience, and she would simply die hungry, but really, really happy.
Not a federal issue. It’s no more senseless than caring what a President thinks of the Death Penalty. It’s just not going to matter. It’s a state issue.
What disinformation did you see in this article?
This is an important issue since it highlights how a candidate thinks about part of the role of government. All the candidates should speak to this issue.
So does Fred!
It really did seem to me that he answered the question.
The whole part about congress has a lot to do and that local issues are for locals. Kinda gives it away IMHO.
I agree with him it was a state issue.
Where things get complicated is what do you do when the state mucks it up and someone is going to die as a result?
The easy answer is to say bump it up the chain to the national level. But be careful of that. First it opens the door to the exact reverse sort of influence. It also means you will politicize court cases, these cases should be decided based on morals and justice NOT DC politics.
This evasive response coupled with his earlier unsatisfying responses on immigration and McCain-Feingold are troubling. Fred is giving his critics the impression that he is not very well prepared. Fred needs to have a wider platform than "I'm not Rudy Giuliani or Hillary Clinton." Most voters need a better reason than that to vote for someone.
I want a debate and I want something more than a character and generalized principles that are non-specific in practice.I agree with that, and that will come in good time.
ping
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
It has been a long time since I have seen figures on just how much of each tax dollar is wasted just going through federal bureaucracies before it goes back to the states in “block grants.”
If Fred Thompson is a federalist, why doesn’t he (propose to)let the states spend their own money on education and (propose to)lower the federal income tax by that much. Let the states collect it in their own taxing schemes. It would cost much less and fewer tax dollars would have to be collected overall, because you are taking the federal bureaucracy out of the picture.
Federal “block grants” only mean that the federal government wants power over all incomes, all taxes and all state programs as well. “Block grants” only represent centralized planning and centralized control. I do not understand why Republican governors are not leading a movement to remove education (and many other things) from the federal budget altogether, and return all of these issues to the states, including the means of paying for them.
If I were a state governor or legislator, I would be using my office to say that the people of my state should not be paying one penny for education through Washington.
That’s because Romney looks like he should remember things.
From a legal standpoint, the courts DETERMINED the patient’s intent, based on evidence provided. They did not “substitute their own judgment”.
We can argue that the evidence was flawed, or that the court excluded other evidence, or that the court misinterpreted the evidence.
But the court did what a court is expected to do, here facts and make decisions.
In my opinion, it was correct to “interfere”, in the sense that we need a federal law that covers cases like this. I disagree with HOW they interfered, and how they did it so specifically for one person.
What we need is a law that says that whenever there is a dispute over the intent of a patient in state court, there should be an absolute right to re-enter the case into the federal court system, which should re-hear the evidence, at the expense of the party asking for the appeal.
This was, the congress isn’t interfering in states rights, but a condemned patient gets a second trial just to make sure that their intent is clear.
I think nobody should be scared that they will be put to death because one judge gets it wrong.
Anyway, the problem with what the feds did is they just had the federal courts review the case, rather than granting a right to a trial in federal court.
Normally I don’t want state matters to go to federal court, but this is a matter of life of an innocent person.
That said, I apparently have a very detailed opinion about the case, and about how we should fix the problem.
I should hope the next President of the United States will give the idea as much thought as I have, and be able to come up with SOME solution like I have.
Given that this happened after Fred was married, and therefore after he had finished his free-spirited part of his life, I would be surprised if he had no knowledge of what happened. And if he never read anything about it, I have to wonder what he was reading and why.
Maybe you should review how Romney was attacked for HIS answer to the question, which has been asked of every republican so far (the media loves it because it splits the social conservatives and the limited-government conservatives. They NEVER ask democrats questions that illustrates splits in their party).
Asked on Hannity and Colmes the other night what distinguished him from the other candidates, in other words, how they differed on issues and why he was running, Thompson replied that he hadn’t had time to analyze their positions and didn’t know their records. He also mumbled that at some point he’d probably be debating them but the implication he left was that he wasn’t sure he’d agree to a debate.
He hasn’t bothered to investigate his opponents positions? He can’t specify how he differs from them and what justifies his entry into the race? He doesn’t have any particular rationale for running? Apparently, beyond what Spencer Abraham wrote for him in the announcement that he was running, Fred doesn’t really know why he’s in the race and can’t remember what the other candidates are saying on the issues. Memory lapses at this stage are not a good sign.
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